Izza Lin, Recruiting Master (林于荃 / 招募輔導長)

Izza is a Recruiting Master responsible for advising AppWorks Startups on all talent acquisition matters. Before joining AppWorks, she built a successful early career in headhunting firms such as Rising Management Consulting and Recruit Express, where she specialized in recruiting quality talents for internet and e-commerce companies, guiding hundreds of engineers, product managers, marketers and general managers to fulfill key positions for her clients. In between Rising and RE, she headed Southeast Asia Market for an e-commerce startup, USO HK, where she found her passion for helping small guys break the status quo. Izza received her B.A. in Economics from Washington State University and spent 5 years of her childhood in Myanmar and Cambodia. This diverse background has inextricably contributed to her love for traveling and “wine tasting”.

Don’t be fooled by the title. I am actually a pretty fun person. Just recruiting isn’t something interesting in general for most founders, but represents one of the most serious growth challenges they eventually have to face. Let’s dig a little deeper on why founders normally don’t enjoy their office hours with me and why I decided to step into a recruiting career. 

I spent my early years in Southeast Asia. Many of you would’ve guessed Singapore, Malaysia or Thailand, but I am that of those few third culture kids that grew up in Myanmar and Cambodia. It definitely wasn’t easy, as the only Taiwanese and only Mandarin speaking girl in the entire international school. However, having a unique experience like this, made me more relatable to what founders are going through, where you need to constantly step out of your comfort zone and maximize your growth to even have the slimmest chance of success.

After graduating from Washington State University with a Bachelor of Science in Economics, I could’ve got a job that is more related to what I learned in school such as data analyst or business analyst roles, but I became intrigued by this random interview I had, which would require me to become a headhunter. 

As much as I was tempted to take on this challenge, moving back to Taiwan for it wasn’t an easy decision. Like many kids that just graduated college, I was young, naive and lost. I was accepted into an MBA program and almost ended up going without knowing how it would help my career. However, after analyzing the entire situation, and also being away from my motherland for so many years, I decided to move back first and see where the journey would take me. 

Well, reality is always cruel. Soon after I relocated myself back home I found out that not only did l take a job with much lower pay than I could have otherwise received as a data or business analyst, I also had very limited knowledge on how to excel at it. The only thing I had was a belief that the job would eventually bring bigger value to my career. At the same time, I overestimated my Mandarin speaking and  writing capabilities, and how it would limit my learning and performance while working in Taiwan. My Mandarin remained at a lower level, but that didn’t stop me from learning. I  dedicated  an hour everyday to speaking Mandarin, and took notes in Chuyin (Mandarin Phonetic Symbols) without fully understanding the meaning of each word. (Jokes aside, previous co-workers would call me Queen of Chuyin). While I quickly improved in Mandarin despite some bumps along the way, my knowledge in tech industries and engineering recruiting grew a lot.

As I got deeper into the field, I learned that recruiting for corporates is so much easier than for startups. Besides the limited resources startups have, it is really hard for them to recruit on their own. This reminds me of school days, when we’re on a difficult path, we love to have someone who understands us, and offers a hand to help. My journey would definitely be easier if I had someone to help me during my school days, but the experience of figuring out things on my own, made me who I am today, and how I reflect on work today.

Office hours with me aren’t the most fun time for founders. I am a typical Asian tiger mom,  teaching and guiding others how to do things the right way in a very hands-on fashion. Maybe the past experience made me bitter, but it has molded me into the  exact Asian tiger mom that every founder needs.

Jack An, Analyst (安良方 / 分析師)

Jack is an Analyst covering AppWorks Accelerator. Before joining the team, he was a co-founder and early team member at two InsurTech startups, where he developed a passion in user experience and product development. Previous to his startup journey he worked as a commercial property underwriter at Chubb Insurance in New Zealand. Jack graduated with a Bachelor of Music from Waikato University where he studied classical piano. He loves to cook, read and is a practicing stoic.

“Hi, my name is Jack.”

“What’s your real name?”

“An Liang Fang.” 

“What does that mean?”

This was a common exchange during my upbringing in New Zealand and probably very familiar to those that studied overseas. Out of curiosity, my classmates at middle school would often ask me to write my name out and explain the meaning behind each exotic character. 安良方 – 安 is my family name, and my father derived 良 from 善良 (kindness) and 方 from 大方 (generosity). I only learned the meaning myself when I “asked for a friend” and through it, I also learned that my dad chose these characters to give me an edge in standard tests because of how quickly my name can be written in Traditional Chinese – only 17 strokes! If you were to write Taiwan 台灣 in Traditional Chinese, the second letter 灣 alone has 25 strokes. 

Although the benefits of having minimal strokes in my name didn’t compound into great academic achievements – perhaps countered by the fact that everyone in New Zealand can write their English name in less than five seconds – but the values behind my name resonated with how Kiwis live on a day-to-day basis. 

People from New Zealand are generally quite diligent and genuine. Now looking back, I’m not entirely surprised that the #1 sport in New Zealand is Rugby Union, a highly-technical team-based game where no particular position is more important than any other. Everyone on the field must tackle their opponents and partake in rucks with players from both sides piling on top of each other fighting for the ball. 

These values of staying humble and working hard were particularly pronounced during my high school days at Tauranga Boys College where our school’s motto is “pergo et perago” – I persevere and I achieve. We were also encouraged to honor the past by creating the future. I think these ideas were derived during WWII where 41 students from my school sacrificed their studies and ultimately their lives protecting the peace we now enjoy. To this day, long groves of trees that provide shade for our sporting field were planted along the outer edge in memory of them. Together with strong Maori influences (the aboriginal people of NZ) such as respecting the land, those around us, and those that came before us, are recurring themes that reinforce the idea that building forward is the best way to give back and show appreciation to what we have today.

My classmates Kane Williamson and Sam Cane took these words to heart and went on to become the captain of the Black Caps (New Zealand’s national cricket team), and the All Blacks (New Zealand’s national rugby team), respectively. And as for myself, I had my first attempt at creating the future with my childhood hobby – music – when the band I started during my second year in university studying classical piano took me around NZ, playing alongside the biggest acts in the country like Six60, Katchafire, Dave Dobbyn, and Savage. 

I continued to practice these values when I transitioned into business. My first corporate job was an underwriter for commercial properties at Chubb Insurance NZ. Then I literally “worked two roles while getting paid for one” as I took up an additional role underwriting for Accident & Health. These experiences became the foundation for my startup when I moved back to Taiwan in 2016. Running a band taught me about branding, creating a product and experiences for the mass public, and my dual role at Chubb helped me accelerate my understanding of the insurance industry. After traveling and living abroad for so long, Taiwan is still #1 to me with endless fond memories and loving people, so of course I had to start a company and build forward to contribute to the country positively. Looking back and connecting the dots it seems natural that I eventually founded an insurance startup in Taiwan and later joined AppWorks to create a bigger impact.

My role at AppWorks has changed a lot in the past few years. From working in the accelerator helping experienced founders land in Taiwan and new founders iterate their launch, to learning the ropes of VC and investing in Southeast Asia, and now dedicating most of my time to build out the web3 arm of AppWorks so we can have the best resources to back founders building the decentralized future. Although the work is difficult and challenging most of the time, it has been an incredible adventure where I’m constantly exercising my founder muscles working within the small AppWorks team of 30, the cherry on top of it all is the valuable experiences I gain from supporting and working with founders across various stages of their entrepreneurial journey. It’s hard to summarize my experience as a founder and my time at AppWorks, but if I can only have two takeaways, it’s 1) learn and improve; 2) design and overcome.

So yeah, this is Jack 安良方 now, a third culture kid that loves to build and support others that are building too. So, if you are creating something valuable, I would love to chat with you to find out how I can help you either personally or through AppWorks. Let’s make a positive impact together!